Week 7 Tuesday

Over the next few weeks you will spend nearly all of our lecture and studio time specifying these aspects of your project:

a system overview

a device list

a timing diagram

a parts list

Be ready to revise what seemed like completed aspects of your project as you learn more about what's available and how things work. Design/revise/design/revise/design/revise....that what the next few weeks will be all about...

Project Selection Status?

Brief report of each team's project selection status.

oncoCURES

ENERGYneering

TrashToTreasure

Neurohackers

Growth!

BoostTheBody

Challenge: System Overview

Part 1: Flip Books

Here's a warm up challenge to show what is meant by a system overview

Working independently, you should take 10 minutes to sketch a process into a flip book (materials to be provided). The process you choose to illustrate is up to you. It can be a plant growing, a house of cards being built, or a happy message appearing letter by letter on a computer screen. What you choose is limited only by the number of pages in your book, your ability to draw, and the limited amount of time we've given you to complete this challenge. 10 minutes only!

Before we move on to the next part of today's class we'll hear from some of the flip-book drawers to learn what worked well and what didn't about this way to overview and illustrate the system

Part 2: Bacterial Buoy

Next you and your project team will generate a system overview for the Melbourne 2007 iGEM "coliform" project.

The Melbourne team wanted to build a 3D, floating mass of bacteria that adhered to one another when the cells detected both blue and red light. In other words: at the intersection of an incoming red light beam and blue light beam, a solution of bacteria would clump and remain suspended in its growth media.

Next your project team should work out a system overview for the coliform project. You can either get an unused flip book (or use the back of one from the warmup exercise), turn the lunar phase wheel over, or come up with some other mechanism of illustrating how the Melbourne team's system would work. You should not spend more than 10 minutes on this activity. When you are done, delegate someone to explain what you've done as a team and what questions arose as you worked. Then you and your team can get right to work on the last thing planned for today's lecture.

Why are we doing this??

As a class we'll consider the value of having a clear system overview:

from 2009:

Part 3: Your Idea Here

Finally, take the rest of today's lecture time to illustrate or specify the system overview of your team's project. You do not need to make a flip book unless you find this a useful way to brainstorm and define the outstanding issues. Ideally some version of the system overview you generate today will be shown in your Tech Spec Review.

Before tomorrow's studio time

If there are outstanding issues related to the system overview for your project be sure everyone on your team knows how you'll solve the issue(s) and make a plan to come to studio tomorrow with materials for finishing the system overview and getting good work done on the device list and, perhaps the timing diagram.

Week 7 Studio

Are there tools or methods for breaking down a complicated problem into simpler parts?

Part 2: Abstraction: System to Devices, pt 2: Polkadorks

That was just a warm up. Now let's try a more dynamic system. Check out the Polkadorks animation. As a class we'll

describe the system in plain language, then

list the devices needed to implement the system

Then as a team you'll have 10 minutes to draw a device-level system diagram.

A sample wiring diagram from the IAP 2004 Polkadork'sEcoli-brator project is shown below. Note how some of the entry and exit wires are given names as well.

list the six devices (or the named connections between these devices) on a y-axis and time on an x-axis and then indicate the timing for operation of each device or wire, including the persistence of each device's signal through time--shown in PS (protein synthesis) and PD (protein degradation) below. You can keep a running list of any uncertainties.

After 15 minutes of work, we'll have each team report back to the group, and then you can spend the rest of today's studio time working on a device list and timing diagram for your own project.

Part 3: Get busy!

Start applying these ideas to your team's project. Be sure to keep your project notebook up to date and help keep each other great.

Week 7 Thursday

We've been working hard this week to move between the System and Device levels of an abstraction hierarchy and today we'll drop down one more level to think about the parts that make up a device. The device we'll consider is a ring oscillator, aka "blinker."

Challenge:Abstraction: Devices to Parts---Blinkers!!!

Working in your project teams, develop a design for a genetically encoded ring oscillator. Your team's written design portfolio should include (a) a high level system diagram, (b) a full devices and parts list, (c) a plan for synthesizing or acquiring all necessary DNA parts, (d) a plan for testing the most important components of your oscillator, (e) a plan for assembling all parts or devices into a final system. You have 1 hour. Your team's DNA synthesis budget is $1000.

NOTE: This activity features an "All questions answered" work environment. Ask questions.

HINT: Your DNA synthesis budget may not be large enough to pay for synthesis of all the parts needed to make an oscillator.

HINT: Your team may not have enough time to design everything needed to make a ring oscillator.

HINT: Spend 2 minutes right now thinking about all the things that need to come together over the next hour for your team to be successful.

Question. How can you check if everybody on your team understands what is going on?